


Horror Vacui

by Tierfal



Series: Love Like Winter [4]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Angst and Humor, Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-20
Updated: 2013-04-20
Packaged: 2017-12-09 01:21:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/768320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The General is a bastard, and Al is not a child.  (Sort of an offshoot of the Love Like Winter 'verse.)</p>
<p>[The usual major spoilers for '03/CoS.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Horror Vacui

**Author's Note:**

> This just jumped directly to the top of the list of Things I Shouldn't Have Written. Have I mentioned recently that Phindus's art just makes me want to write like a maniac? XD Look at [this beauty](http://phindus.tumblr.com/post/48321554902/i-swear-i-will-stop-drawing-cos-al-trying-to), if you don't believe me!
> 
> …anyway, this is a snippet of the sort of thing that would have happened if I had left space in the Frozen Flame timeline for it. XD Instead you can treat it like a what-if outtake! :D ~~Or you can take me out back and put me down like I deserve.~~

Using one’s voice to purr while remaining intelligible is rather more difficult than the average romance novel would lead one to believe.

“Oh, _General_ ,” Al murmurs as enticingly as possible.

That wasn’t quite a purr. Perhaps if he added a bit more of a rasp next time, or if he rolled the _R_ , or…

“I said ‘no’, Alphonse,” the General says. “I have now said it an even dozen times.”

He’s the type to have actually counted—the _bastard_. Al understands now why Brother’s notes were peppered with the word, saturated with it, turning it into an alias and a nickname and something like an endearment. Roy Mustang is a _bastard_ , from the tip of every strand of midnight hair to the deepest bastions of his granite heart. He’s arrogant and sarcastic and closed-off and charming and altogether too decent to be seduced by the fifteen-year-old brother of his vanished lover.

If one purrs the word “bastard”, does it start to sound affectionate?

Roy Mustang, bastard general extraordinaire, does not _sprawl_ on the bed, as any other human being might do in his place—he _stretches out and luxuriates_. It’s very impressive, all things considered; Al always supposed that he must have remarkable control of his body and his impulses to have mastered the staggeringly subtle art of Flame Alchemy, but supposing as much and actually _seeing_ the consummate self-control in every line and muscle of his body as he moves…

Well, it whets Al’s hunger for him even more.

“Why, _General_ ,” Al says, possibly with a hint of desperation, clambering up onto the bed, “may I join y—”

“No, Alphonse.”

“I only meant t—”

“ _No_ , Alphonse.”

“Whoops, there goes my shi—”

“No, and that’s fifteen.” The General shifts to lie on his (strong, beautiful) back, folds his hands on his chest, and sighs. “I’m honestly not sure whether to applaud you for your persistence or berate you for your stubbornness.”

“Why don’t you reward me for both?” Al asks, crawling up beside him.

The General gives him a fairly mild reprimanding look as he nestles into the folds of the blanket, within wriggling distance of the General’s side. Al could alchemize those pajamas into not-so-tasteful rags if he’d thought to leave his gloves on; he could transmute them into a cord to bind the General’s enterprising hands; he could trail his fingertips downward over every rise of bone and ridge of scar tissue too-white against the ivory skin; he…

…is getting hard in a hurry.

The General’s next sigh begins as a low rumble deep in his chest. “Aren’t you even the slightest bit exhausted from spending the better part of two hours trying to wear me down?”

Al waits until the General glances over and meets that single eye, angling his own gaze through his lashes.

“General,” he says, “I could go all night.”

“No, you couldn’t,” the General says with a narrow smile. “That would require superhuman stamina and a wealth of knowledge from experience, neither of which you possess.”

Al’s instinct is to pout, but he knows that Ed would bristle. “All the same, my _enthusiasm_ —”

“Is going to get you hurt very badly someday,” the General says softly. “Please don’t force me to be the one who does it.”

Roy Mustang, bastard general extraordinaire, has no right to criticize anyone for stubbornness.

“You wouldn’t hurt me,” Al says. “I can tell that about you.” He levers himself up on his elbows, inching a little closer under the guise of getting comfortable. “You’d be careful. You’d be kind. You’d hold me afterward and ask me how it was and run your fingers through my hair and wax poetic and talk to me about Brothe—”

“Goodnight, Alphonse,” the General says, and turns away.

But he’s wrong—wrong about Al, anyway. Al can take rebuffs and rejections all day long and feed off of them forever, because they’re data points. If he keeps changing his tactics every time, eventually he’ll find something that works; the refusals are a thousand little challenges, and they motivate him all the more. Science doesn’t flag. Science doesn’t fail. Science does not understand the concept of defeat.

And surely the General knows better. Surely the General knows that Elrics are incapable of giving up; and surely the General knows that, in a world rife with different varieties of pain and peril, _nothing_ hurts more than an absence.

There is nothing that General Roy Mustang or anyone else could throw at Al that would hurt more than losing Ed in so many ways at once.

As far as Al’s concerned, the bastard is welcome to do his worst.


End file.
